An expensive place to take a break from shopping
The café inside the brand new M&S was incredibly busy on the day the flagship store opened(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
Even in the context of the opening day bedlam at Marks and Spencer’s new flagship shop in Cabot Circus, the in-store café was particularly busy. A huge scrum of shoppers flooded the café, at the back of the shop’s enormous food hall, to try it out.
I understood the excitement around the opening of the new M&S, but I was slightly more baffled by how keen everyone was to be among the first to sample the delights of an in-house café.
I went back on a thankfully much calmer second day of the shop’s opening to try it out for myself.
Thankfully, you go up to a till and speak to a human being who takes your order – it’ll never catch on – unlike at the touch screen-heavy café in M&S’s Cribbs Causeway store.
The festive menu is already in full swing at the café. There are two Christmas toasties: one with ‘pigs under blankets’ and the other a gluten-free turkey option. Both will set you back the princely sum of £7.50
A Yorkshire Pudding wrap, similar to the much-loved Bristol Christmas market classic, costs £8.50.
On the drinks side, a calorific Rodney Reindeer hot chocolate is available for £4.25, with a maple spiced latte coming in at £4.
There’s also a selection of standard café classics, from bacon or sausage baps (£4.50) to a huge range of pastries and baked goods.
My bill for three items – the turkey toastie, a regular cappuccino (£3.60) and a mini-Colin the Caterpillar (£2.25) placed strategically at the till – came in at a hefty £13.35. The toastie and coffee were both pretty underwhelming, no better than what you’d get at Greggs for a considerably lower price. Colin was great though.
A sadly underwhelming way to spend £13.35
The new café has 200 seats for people wishing to dine-in, between that and takeaways it will clearly print money on days when the shop is busy.
It’s a nice environment to sit in; a lot of the mainly elderly patrons I spoke to said they were relieved to have somewhere they could relax while they were on a shopping trip, giving a sense of what has been missing in the Centre since the closure of the Broadmead M&S in 2022.
Given M&S’s reputation for luxury, it wasn’t a surprise the café was so expensive, but I felt the quality was sadly lacking. Not that I suspect that will matter to the coffee shop’s bottom line.